Getting Bored in Class? Speed it up Chipmunk Style!

You know those days you’re in class and the teacher is droning on and on really slowly about something that just absolutely bores you. Those classes tend to feel like they are going on forever! And, you tend to learn very little.

The same pattern also happens when listening to slow lectures or when reading through a dense textbook word by word, page by page.

If you find that in the midst of a lesson or study session, when you should be absorbing new information, your mind is off with the faeries – then you’re not learning anything. You are doing yourself a great disservice by allowing unrelated thoughts to interrupt your learning process.
What happens is that your mind is getting bored and so you are unable to learn because it actually shuts down your learning faculty. You start to daydream or think of other stuff that’s not relevant. Even if you have your textbook open right in front of you and your eyes are still scanning the pages, you are not absorbing any information.

If you find this happens to you, all it means is that you need to work at a faster pace. Your mind operates at a faster pace and you need to catch up to that speed if you want it to learn any content.

If you zone out while reading, then you are reading too slowly to keep your mind engaged enough for learning. If you’re listening to a teacher or a recorded lecture and you find you are zoning out, you need to speed it up to the speed your mind can absorb the information at.

This is obviously difficult to do if you’re in a live class. I would suggest that if you know you have a teacher who explains things too slowly for you, record their class and then play it back at 1.5x or 1.75x the speed during your study periods.

They will sound like a chipmunk (and it will be absolutely hilarious)! Once you overcome the initial teacher chipmunk hilarity, you will find that by listening to them talking faster, your mind will be able to zone in and listen to everything they are saying. It doesn’t have the opportunity to zone out and daydream or think of irrelevant things because the material is being covered way too quickly and your mind cannot afford to miss anything that’s being said.

Try it out and let me know how you go!